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of beeps and catheters and runny food and sponge baths. The latter ritual I might have enjoyed if the part of me that could appreciate such things hadn’t been out of order.
    Three weeks to the day I’d been admitted, Mick Molloy came to see me. I’d been expecting him, and said as much as he drew a folding metal chair close to my bedside and sat down.
    “Why’s that?” he asked, and set another bloody bouquet down on the table. Orchids. There was a small white card stuffed among them.
    “Well, because I’m sure you couldn’t wait to see the result of your handiwork.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “The Murphy brothers. Drowned. Roger Kennedy. OD’ed. Me, paralyzed. The four fellas who beat you to a pulp years ago. You going to tell me you had nothing to do with it?”
    He spread his hands. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
    “The fuck you don’t. You’re a sick bastard, Molloy, and when I’m back on my feet I can promise I’ll be paying you a visit. You had a score to settle and you settled it, but I’m still alive and now I have one of my own. And believe me, you’re going to be sorry for what you’ve done.”
    He sighed. “You know my father taught me how to fight?”
    “I don’t give a shit.”
    “I was fourteen and the school bully’s favorite target. I got tired of being beaten, so I told my father. He took me down to the basement and toughened me up. The beatings he gave me made the bully’s look like an Indian burn. Taught me how to fight back. And I did. Hit the bully with a left hook, right in the mouth. Then he broke my arm.”
    “I’m not interested in your sob stories, Molloy. You’re a pathetic waste of space, and you’re lucky I can’t stand right now.”
    “Do you think I did this to you?”
    “I don’t think. I know.”
    “What if it was just karma, or fate?”
    “I don’t buy into any of that hippie bollocks.”
    “Maybe you should. Things have a way of working out in favor of the kind.”
    “Oh for Christ’s sake.” There was button on a lead next to my bed. I reached for it, thumbed the button, summoning the nurse. I’d had it with Molloy. My temper demanded I at least try to hurt him, but the lingering shred of reason that ran like a vein of silver through a hard mountain told me I’d be the one who suffered most. The painkillers were doing a good job of making me feel damn near invincible, but already I’d felt the sheer enormity of the pain that came without them, so I restrained myself. I’d heal, I promised myself. I’d get better, and when I did, I’d tear this fucker to pieces with my bare hands.
    “Bad men meet bad ends,” Molloy said, rising. “It’s not always the fault of their victims.”
    “Oh you’re some victim all right,” I seethed. “Fucking psychopath is what you are.”
    He smiled, almost serenely. “I’m sorry for you. Get well soon.”
    “Better hope I don’t, you prick.”
    He was gone before the nurse arrived with her faux concern, and by then I didn’t need her. She looked frustrated, so to give her something to do, I instructed her to dump the flowers Molloy had brought. She obeyed, but paused as she was leaving.
    “There’s a card.”
    “Big deal.”
    “Want me to read it?”
    “No.”
    “It’s sweet.”
    I sighed, looked out the window at a construction crane hoisting girders over the city. “Sweet,” I echoed, and said nothing more. The nurse interpreted it as a cue to continue.
    “It says: ‘Hope to see you back on your feet soon. Catch you later!—Mick’.”
    She gave a little hum of approval, then I listened as her soft-soled shoes squeaked away. I clenched my fists, willed the tension in them to run down to my legs, to infuse them with the life they’d forgotten, demanded they remember.
    They lay there, useless. Not so much as a twitch.
    I thought of Molloy’s card and grit my teeth.
    The ambiguity of his words was not lost on me.
    He would be waiting for me when I got out.
    They always